Jadon

The Jadon, or Jadaun, are a Rajput clan of the Lunar lineage, claiming descent from the god Krishna. Tradition holds that the clan once ruled at Mathura before Muslim pressure pushed it west into Rajasthan. Raja Vijay Pal built the fort of Bayana in 1040, and his successor Timan Pal, ruling from 1093 to 1159, broadened the chiefship.

In 1348 Raja Arjun Pal Dev founded a new capital at Kalyanpuri, the later Karauli, which became the clan's permanent seat. Mahmud Khalji stormed Karauli in 1454, and the rajas withdrew to Untagarh.

Raja Gopaldas recovered the ancestral capital with the favour of the Mughal emperor Akbar. Thereafter the Jadons served the Mughals as local chiefs and in 1817 entered a subsidiary alliance with the East India Company, continuing as princes of Karauli through the early nineteenth century.